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Saturday, March 30, 2013

Book Spotlight and Giveaway: Revelation by Morrie Richfield


Revelation banner.jpg




About the Book:

Mr. Breeze is back; so is Michael Ryan and Rover, the magical dog.

MR. BREEZE fans can rejoice. REVELATION, Morrie Richfield’s much-anticipated sequel to his novel MR. BREEZE, has arrived. Readers new to the strange but inspiring tale of a super being and his attempt to set mankind on a straight and moral path for its very survival can immerse themselves in what critics and readers alike are calling an “inspirational fantasy” with important lessons for all of us.

In MR. BREEZE, published in 2011, Richfield introduced readers to Zackary, aka Zack, aka Mr. Breeze, an ancient being who claimed to be mankind’s creator and who still exerts a powerful force on the human race and its very existence. Zack appeared on earth as a powerful man who did miraculous deeds. He chose journalist Michael Ryan to tell his story in a book that, he hoped, would show mankind how to stop its self-destructive ways and bring paradise on earth. With man’s fate hanging in the balance, Zack disappeared, leaving humans to their fate and Michael wondering what his role really is.

REVELATION moves the action two years into the future. The situation looks bleak. Mankind has slipped back into its old, destructive ways and Michael has become a dissolute recluse. There are people who view Michael as a savior and others who see him as a threat to be eliminated.

Along this strange trip, Michael meets new friends and reunites with old companions, the most significant of which is Rover, an abused dog whom Zack endowed with superpowers. Rover becomes Zack’s messenger to Michael, as Michael tries to get Zack’s original message out to the world:  If mankind doesn’t straighten out, he will destroy the human race.

Richfield plays down the description of REVELATION as an “inspirational fantasy.” He calls it a “self-help book, a textbook, a reality series on paper. It is what we see when we look in the mirror.”

If MR. BREEZE focused on Zack and his message, REVELATION focuses on Michael, following his struggle to understand his role in Zack’s master plan and to find his soul, Richfield says. “Michael’s final revelation is that we just don’t learn. Without the threat of destruction, we go back to our old ways. Our time is almost up and we need to do something. We need to show Mr. Breeze the human race deserves a chance to continue to exist.”




AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE


Book Excerpt:

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Yes, it is me, Michael Ryan. I’m sure you remember me. After all, for a short time, I was about the most famous man in the world. For those of you who have forgotten, let me fill you in on what has happened in the two years since I last saw Zackary Breeze and Rover.

Of course you must remember Zack Breeze and Rover. Zack as he called himself is this time is our maker. He cured our diseases told us our religions are nothing but of our own making and turned a normal German Sheppard dog whose name is Rover into the second most powerful being on the planet. Let’s not forget that he used me to write his story and threatened our immediate destruction should I refuse.

I wrote the book that Zack asked me to write. It sold more copies than any book in history, and you all read it. I was oh so pleased with myself. I was rich, famous, and revered. You could not open a newspaper or magazine without seeing my name in it somewhere. It was my fifteen minutes of fame, so to speak.

For a time, there seemed to be hope in the world. The wars and fighting stopped—it was as if no one knew if the next shot fired would be the one that would bring the human race to an end. People seemed to like that I was somehow partly responsible for all of these remarkable things that had happened. I was admired by many, but what I did not know at the time was that I was hated by an equal number.

It seemed that once people heard Zack’s words, most of them stopped going to churches, synagogues, mosques, or any public place of worship. They prayed on their front yards and in alleys and at any time they felt the need. Only now, they prayed to Zack, and a somewhat zealous few even prayed to me.

For those fanatics, you see, I was the messenger of God. Through me, they thought they could find salvation, and, boy, did they try. They camped out on my street, in my yard, and even in my neighbors’ yards. They also built structures to honor me out of stuff from my trash and the trash of everyone else on the street. As you can probably imagine, my neighbors were not pleased, and neither was I. I was like a movie star; I couldn’t go out in public without paparazzi on my tail and people asking me to touch them. My fifteen minutes of fame had turned into twenty-four hours a day of hell.

Then the reaction from the religious community came. They finally realized that without worshippers and money, they would not survive. For them, Zack meant the end of their existence, and I became their target for retaliation.
“The devil comes to us in many forms” became their rallying cry, and as for me, I became the devil’s minion. I guess I couldn’t blame them for trying to bring their followers back, but I was astounded by how many people believed them. They quickly forgot what they had seen and what Zack had done. They even managed to convince the majority of the world that Zack cured all of their diseases just so he could fool them into thinking he was our maker.

Let’s also not forget how the pharmaceutical companies chimed in. After all, no more diseases meant no one needed medication, so no more business. They jumped right on that bandwagon and within a few months had almost everyone believing their miraculous cures were temporary. So back on the drugs they went, and back came the profits.

I suppose I should have expected there would be some reaction; after all, I always believed religion was nothing more than a very profitable business whose main currency was either hope or fear. If they could not get your money by making you believe in one, they would threaten you with the other. Just like any other business, they needed their customers to survive.

Suddenly, my home, my yard, and my street became the focal point for the battle between those who thought Zack was our savior and those who thought he was the devil. It was not a pretty sight. At first, there were just signs and lots of chanting, but then came the physical confrontations followed by the police in riot gear. I was a prisoner in my own house—that is, until someone decided to throw a Molotov cocktail through one of my windows and burn my house down.


Book Trailer:



 




About the Author:

Morrie Richfield lives in Pennsylvania with his two sons, his dogs and his cat. He is working on his next novel, and he still dreams that someday the world will be a better place for all of us to live.

His latest book is the inspirational fantasy novel, Revelation: The Return of Mr. Breeze.

Visit his website at www.mrbreezethenovel.com.







 Rafflecopter Code for $100 Amazon Gift Card/Paypal Cash Giveaway: a Rafflecopter giveaway 


Revelation Tour Page: http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2013/02/23/pump-up-your-book-presents-revelation-virtual-book-publicity-tour-win-100-visa-card/

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Margay Leah Justice: Hopeless by Colleen Hoover: Review

Margay Leah Justice: Hopeless by Colleen Hoover: Review: Sometimes discovering the truth can leave you more hopeless than believing the lies. In this #1  New York Times  bestselling nov...

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Margay Leah Justice: Spring Into Spring Giveaway! (Win a $150 Target Gi...

Margay Leah Justice: Spring Into Spring Giveaway! (Win a $150 Target Gi...: Welcome to the "Spring Into Spring" giveaway event sponsored by Famous Free Samples , sister site of Tip Hero , featuring some fab...

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Margay Leah Justice: Book Spotlight: Immortal Eclipse by Sherry Soule

Margay Leah Justice: Book Spotlight: Immortal Eclipse by Sherry Soule: To celebrate the release of author, Sherry Soule’s New Adult novel, IMMORTAL ECLIPSE coming out April 1, 2013, I have...

Monday, March 18, 2013

Margay Leah Justice: Special Guest D'Ann Lindun

Margay Leah Justice: Special Guest D'Ann Lindun: Guest Post  by D'Ann Lindun I had to be in the sixth grade, sitting in Tolleson, Arizona, when the TV showed ...

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Oddities and Entities Blog Tour




Pathos and Purpose: Crafting Bizarre Characters

by

 Roland Allnach

One of the challenges faced by authors is the credible depiction of characters that stand outside the everyday norm.  So, how does an author construct an abnormal character?

The sarcastic answer is that the author is a little off-center.  But, aside from that, crafting an abnormal character isn’t much different than crafting a so-called normal character.  Characters are people at their core, and to depict them requires fleshing out the thoughts, sensitivities, and motivations of their personalities.  A theory of neurology is that the human mind evolved as a problem solving organ.  As such, it functions on logic structures that make sense of the world and its dizzying array of sensory input.  In many ways, society can be viewed as a mutually agreed interpretation of the world by a given people.  Religious organizations, basic morality, and societal law are all extensions of our quest to reduce the chaos of the world to predictable outcomes and acceptable explanations of the unknown.  Just as a society projects these interpretations, it is turn bound by the mutual belief in these interpretations.

With this in mind, the prospect of an abnormal character can be more readily understood.  People who suffer from paranoia and delusion often construct elaborate alternate interpretations of the world around them, interpretations that differ from the societal standard.  Nevertheless, such individuals can provide reason and context to their actions and beliefs.  They have a logical structure, concocted to satisfy the individual’s skewed interpretation of the common world.  For outsiders, judgments of deviant, madness, sociopath and psychopath can then be thought of as relativistic labels.

To the abnormal individual, on the other hand, nothing is seen as amiss.  This person has constructed a unique system and from it derived a set of sensitivities, thoughts, and motivations.  For both an author and a reader, the process of revealing this three-fold set is what lends substance to an abnormal individual.  A window of introspection, a brief analysis of the person’s actions, and the individual is not only humanized but through the process of humanization made even more disturbing for the nature of the person’s thoughts.

Why?  It’s easy to dismiss things we don’t understand.  Understanding converts an abnormal personality from an encapsulated label to a living, feeling entity.  This sense of identity not only provides a welcome dimension to an abnormal character’s depiction, but lends emotional substance to any conflict within which the character engages a story’s protagonist - more so, if the protagonist is the abnormal character.  The world of fiction is an amorphous land between the abnormal and the good.  As extensions of the real world, they’re just people driven by differing interpretations.

The worst dictators in human history often had pets that they loved.  Something to keep in mind, the next time you dive into a book of strange personalities or strange realities.



About the Author:

Roland Allnach has been writing since his early teens, first as a hobby, but as the years passed, more as a serious creative pursuit. He is an avid reader, with his main interests residing in history, mythology, and literary classics, along with some fantasy and science fiction in his earlier years. Although his college years were focused on a technical education, he always fostered his interest in literature, and has sought to fill every gap on his bookshelves.

By nature a do-it-yourself type of personality, his creative inclinations started with art and evolved to the written word. The process of creativity is a source of fascination for him, and the notion of bringing something to being that would not exist without personal effort and commitment serves not only as inspiration but as fulfillment as well. So whether it is writing, woodwork, or landscaping, his hands and mind are not often at rest.
Over the years he accumulated a dust laden catalog of his written works, with his reading audience limited to family and friends. After deciding to approach his writing as a profession, and not a hobby, the first glimmers of success came along. Since making the decision to move forward, he has secured publication for a number of short stories, has received a nomination for inclusion in the Pushcart Anthology, built his own website, and in November 2010 realized publication for an anthology of three novellas, titledRemnant, from All Things That Matter Press. Remnant has gone on to favorable critical review and placed as Finalist/Sci-fi, 2011 National Indie Excellence Awards; Bronze Medalist, Sci-Fi, 2012 Readers Favorite Book of the Year Awards; and Award Winner-Finalist, Sci-Fi, 2012 USA Book News Best Book Awards. Roland’s second publication, Oddities & Entities, also from All Things That Matter Press, followed in March 2012. It, too, has received favorable critical review, and is the recipient of four awards: Bronze Medalist, Horror, and Finalist, Paranormal, 2012 Readers Favorite Book of the Year Awards; Award Winner-Finalist, Fiction/Horror and Fiction/Anthologies, 2012 USA Book News Best Book Awards.

His writing can best be described as depicting strange people involved in perhaps stranger situations. He is not devoted to any one genre of writing. Instead, he prefers to let his stories follow their own path. Classification can follow after the fact, but if one is looking for labels, one would find his stories in several categories. Sometimes speculative, other times supernatural, at times horror, with journeys into mainstream fiction, and even some humor- or perhaps the bizarre. Despite the category, he aims to depict characters as real on the page as they are in his head, with prose of literary quality. His literary inspirations are as eclectic as his written works- from Poe to Kate Chopin, from Homer to Tolkien, from Flaubert to William Gibson, from Shakespeare to Tolstoy, as long as a piece is true to itself, he is willing to go along for the ride. He hopes to bring the same to his own fiction.

WEBSITE | GOODREADS | FACEBOOK



About the Book:

‘Oddities & Entities’ is a surreal, provocative anthology of six tales within the supernatural/ paranormal/horror genres, exploring a definition of life beyond the fragile vessel of the human body. The stories are: ‘Boneview’, in which a young woman struggles to balance her ability to see through people with the presence of a supernatural creature in her life; ‘Shift/Change’, in which a hospital worker struggles to regain his memory as he is confronted by a series of desperate people; ‘My Other Me’, in which a lonely college student finds himself displaced from his body by his alter ego; ‘Gray’, in which a frustrated man is stunned to discover a little creature has been living in his head; ‘Elmer Phelps’, in which a brother and sister find themselves linked in a strange reality by a bat bite in their youth; and lastly, ‘Appendage’, in which a cynical mercenary is hired by his son to protect a research lab on the verge of a stunning discovery.

Praise for Oddities & Entities:

“Oddities & Entities” by Roland Allnach, categorized as horror fiction, is unlike any other horror fiction I have ever encountered. The book is comprised of six stories, each of which is written a cut above the norm. There are no recognizable monsters in these stories, no sophomoric zombies, no evil ancient vampires, and none of the standard fare I have become accustomed to in the horror genre. I do like the usual run of the horror genre, but this book is written with thoughtful intelligence, for an intelligent adult reader. I do not mean to imply sexual situations or coarse language. What I mean is, any intelligent reader, capable of deep thought, will find this book irresistible. The six individual stories are as unlike as any six stories can be, yet each one is so sufficiently well-written that, if sold as individual short stories, I wouldn’t hesitate to award 5 stars to each of them.
To say I like this book is a crass understatement. Each story drew me in and evoked my empathy for various characters. These stories forced me to actually think beyond what I was reading. Each premise was unique, at least in my experience; I have never encountered any other stories that even approach the situations these present with authority and authenticity. If I could boil down my perception of this book into a single word, that word would be WOW! Roland Allnach’s first anthology, “Remnant”, which I have also read, was placed as a finalist in the Science Fiction category in the 2011 National Indie Excellence Awards. I absolutely expect “Oddities & Entities” to follow suit. If you read only one book this year, make it this one. Be prepared to have your comfort zone challenged.

– Readers Favorite (ReadersFavorite.com)

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE


Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Spotlight on: Carla Kelly's My Loving Vigil Keeping







Here is a brief description of the book:
Della’s giving up all the comforts of bustling Salt Lake City to teach school in a rural coal mining camp. Little does she know, she may soon be giving up her heart as well. But when tragedy strikes in the Scofield Mine, Della’s life will be changed forever. Based on true events, this thrilling new romance from award-winning and bestselling author Carla Kelly is a must-read!
Meet the Author:
I’m a writer and a historian, author of a few novels and short stories, and mother of five children. My husband recently (last year) retired, and we moved from North Dakota to Utah, where we have relatives. You can learn more about Carla’s writing at carlakellyauthor.blogspot.com. And don’t forget to check out her other books:
Reforming Lord Ragsdale
Enduring Light
Borrowed Light
In Love and WAr: A Collection of Love Stories